Last of the Independents
By Matt Fraction and Kieron Dwyer
Published by AiT/Planet Lar
Give this to a friend looking for a good summer novel. The tone is set in one of the opening phrases, "Dude...we're robbing the bank."
Fraction and Dwyer turn out an exciting, unapologetic heist story ("He wanted to call it a 'caper,' too, but you put your foot down...") focusing on three people -- Cole, Billy and Justine. Cole is an aging ne'er-do-well who had his amusement park taken away by the bank. Justine is his lover/partner/equal, a stunt pilot who has fallen in love with Cole and will follow him to the end; Billy is their strongman/handyman/tech guy, good with machines but not so much with the smartness. The three of them see their mission to recover their money from the bank as a righteous one, and it almost is, until that classic moment in any heist story...
Something goes wrong.
This trio of bank robbers is delightfully depicted by Fraction and Dwyer as sympathetic anti-heroes who are more victims of circumstance than victimizers. They (and what the remove from the bank vault) end up pursued by a gang of Vegas hoods who had no idea what they were getting themselves in to.
Cole, Justine and Billy hardly get through this adventure unscathed. They're normal people with perhaps above-average abilities and ambition, but their foes are mightily motivated and the conflict between the two very quickly turns into war, and there's no guarantee at all that anyone is going to get out of it alive.
Fraction's script is mannered but charming -- not unnatural, exactly, but hyper-real in the way of a great heist movie like Reservoir Dogs (although this one owes more to heist tales of the '60s and '70s, as its creators acknowledge). You couldn't ask for a project more different than what you might expect from the writer of The Annotated Mantooth or the writer/artist of the perverse and hilarious LCD; Fraction and Dwyer show a great deal of versatility in bringing out a tale this different from their previous work.
The key appeal of the story lies not in the shooting and fighting and exploding -- although there's plenty of all that, and to the story's benefit -- but rather in the depth of the relationships between the three leads, committed to each other and to what they see as justice, each always there for the others.
I'll just say it again, give this to a friend looking for a good summer novel. Because that's what it is. Grade: 4/5